If fall is my favorite season, then Halloween is my favorite holiday.
I think a lot of this has to do with my last name formerly being a variation of bat. When you're named after icon of a holiday, there are certain expectations to live up to, as I'm sure any Noelles or Hollys can attest to. And so, throughout my childhood I dove into decorating our house with cobwebs and cutouts of pumpkins, haunted houses and my mother's windsock collection. I am also blessed with a mother who sews, so I always had really awesome costumes, which corresponds nicely with that theatrical bent of mine.
Throughout college, I continued to dress up in interesting, if less elaborate, costumes and would throw halloween parties with my housemates, where we would borrow the theatre department's fog machine, cover all the furniture in white sheets to look like a haunted house, mull cider and I would try to get people to bob for apples (no one would).
This year, between getting married and boo.scream.thump and life, I haven't had time to pull anything crazy together, so the Charlie Brown shirt makes yet another appearance and a single small white mini pumpkin decorates the top of the tv.
All of this is not to say that I'm not going to enjoy the day, because there is yet another reason that I love Halloween. For it was on this lovely holiday two years ago that I met my Mr. Cleaver.
Actually, that's not entirely true. We had met briefly twice before at bar trivia (shh.. don't tell my mother!), but we both consider this the night we truly met. I was interning in Maine and his housemate, my coworker, was throwing a party.
I came as Charlie Brown (I had a couple of lazy years in there, so sue me) and he, in the manner of most last-minute male costumes, was Hugh Hefner. About ten minutes into the party we started chatting and continued to do so for the next four hours or so. Or as a friend later said: "you guys were thisclose for four hours!"
And the rest, as they say, is history.
